Barks' nascent interest in the environment was reflected in this statement that he made in his golden years: I was never a Boy Scout, but oh, I wanted to be one when I was a kid about ten or eleven years old. But there wasn't anyplace where I could ever join the Boy Scouts.
Barks' interest in the boy scout movement and its dedication to the preservation of the environment supposedly gave him the idea for the Junior Woodchucks, and he must have been pleased when he was bestowed with the great title of Exalted Hightail #1 in Stockholm during his European tour in 1994. Barks happily stood to attention wearing the special coonskin cap while the audience cheered.

Several of Barks' stories, especially from the 1950s, may be taken as his eye-openers to the readers on how we treated the environment back then. In this story from 1952 Donald and the nephews are having a quiet vacation on a houseboat on Lake Erie. At one point the nephews decide to have a swim but they are immediately deterred, when they find themselves covered in mud.
No doubt, Barks chose the spot for his story carefully; Lake Erie had severe problems with chemical waste from industries, raw sewage, and garbage, and just a few years later it was living under a death sentence as both scientists and the public believed that the pollution had sealed its fate.
Twenty years later the problems had still not been solved, which then caused Barks to yet another story about the lake; in HDL17 he came with a much harsher and more direct attack on the location (more later).

In 1953 Barks wrote this story in which veritable forests of traffic signs played a prominent part. Barks satirized over the excess numbers of puzzling road signs which, in the story, brought Donald down. Things have not exactly improved much since then...
In WDCS160 'The Christmas Camel' from the following year Barks - who was living in a desert area in California at the time - commented on the new craze of building large illuminated signs that could be seen from far away in the desert but which ruined the views of the splendid natural scenery.

This story from 1956 is a good example of a narrative taking place in the local habitat that many of us are so familiar with - our garden. Here Barks is really giving a lesson on how Mother Nature works independent of what man wishes.
Although the tone of the story is relatively unrestrained, Barks also manages to hand us some serious pointers on the topic of environment represented in plants and animals, and the lesson is so clear that even small children should be able to catch the message: Man can decide, but Nature rules.

Barks wrote a handful of stories in which the preservation of wildlife was the main topic. In this story from 1956 he gives a lesson in how to care for a giant animal (and why it is not a good idea!). Later on, in his HDL years, Barks would take up the whale theme again in further stories.
Other examples from the same category are WDCS218 'The Porpoise Catcher' from the same year, and WDCS240 Fraidy Falcon from 1960 where he briefly touches the topic of bird sanctuaries, a theme that he would pursue in his golden years.

In 1957 Barks made his strongest statement against the way people mistreated their surroundings by thoughtless pollution of air and water. In this story he really made a bogey of Duckburg that was on a downward slope caused by industrial air pollution. It was even too much for Scrooge - who partly earned money on the pollution - and he bought some land up north by the Great Lakes in order to get clean air down his lungs. Here he received another lecture, this time from the area's small inhabitants, who taught him that no one can own the wind, the fishes or the land.
No doubt, that Barks enjoyed himself with this story where he could really express his environmental views.

The HDL Series

From 1970 to 1974 - long time after his official retirement from Western - Barks wrote and sketched 24 stories for the Huey, Dewey and Louie Junior Woodchucks' comic book series (HDL). A listing can be seen HERE. In these stories Barks mostly campaigned against industrial misuse of the world's ecology and he often commented on the general deterioration of the environment. This, in fact, happened long before the environmentalists 'took over' and Barks may be seen as a front runner for the coming movements holding one of the most powerful tools for getting his messages through - the comic book.
The most harsh and direct attack came in HDL17 Be Leery of Lake Eerie where Barks ridiculed the lack of environmental understanding by demonstrating what would happen if no action is taken against pollution. Once again he chose Lake Erie as an example of severe water pollution (see above). But in other stories the main plots circled around the problems with industrial waste, exploitation of forests, and garbage handling. Furthermore, Barks wrote a number of stories in which whales and their habitat were in focus.

Barks used his golden years as an environmentalist in a more unobtrusive way. His main interest was the welfare of animals. One of his favourite charities was 'Wildlife Images', a non-profit North American animal rehabilitation corporation where injured and orphaned animals are cared for until they can be returned to the wild. Barks would occasionally visit their branch near his home in Grants Pass, Oregon.

Barks did not mellow over the years. On the contrary, he made these two eye-openers during late interviews. They should stand alone as Barks' uncompromising comments to the way we (still) treat the world we are given:
Clean air, clean water, clean environment. We think of those things as part of our birthright. They were long ago, before we overran them with our brand of civilization. Now, what have we got? Air so polluted that we have to grind it before it will filter through our gas masks. Water so undrinkable that it is safer to die of thirst. Environment so littered that we cannot see the ground, and ground so caustic with chemical spill that it eats through the soles of our shoes.
and
So we dream that somewhere in the boondocks we can find a place that is still as clean as nature intended? But if we find such a place; would it be safe to move in?